UPEK Eikon fingerprint reader now supports OS X

Early in the summer Ars ran a review of fingerprint scanners. My favorite ended up being the Upek Eikon for a host of reasons, but mainly because it was one of the easiest to use and had the most applications natively supported, namely Firefox. I remember a ton of readers e-mailed me asking whether I knew of any readers that supported OS X.

Today, Upek announced that its Eikon fingerprint reader is now compatible with OS X, so all the Apple folks out there can finally give the fingerprint reader a whirl. Until now, the only other standalone fingerprint reader (that I'm aware of) that's compatible with OSX has been the Sony MicroVault USB thumb drive.

The Eikon drive itself hasn't changed, rather, the change is with the Upek Eikon Digital Privacy Manager software, which now supports OS X. The Eikon is available for $40. I was not immediately able to determine which exact versions of OSX support the reader, or whether the reader is supported in Safari as well as it is in IE 7 and Firefox.